Frances and Patrick Stolle

For as long as he can remember, Patrick Stolle (B.B.A. ’85) knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur.

In elementary school, Stolle purchased candy in bulk before selling individual pieces to classmates on Monday morning bus rides, while he also delivered groceries to a neighbor’s home via bicycle, a manual precursor to 21st-century digital-era solutions such as Instacart and Shipt.

“I got a 10- or 15-cent tip,” Stolle recalls of his delivery efforts. “It was just in me to run my own business. I knew one day I would.”

This same kind of passion in business has increasingly led Stolle into philanthropy. In 2018, Stolle and his wife, Frances, established two planned gifts with Texas State University. The Frances and Patrick Stolle Endowed Scholarship in Entrepreneurship with the McCoy College of Business Foundation benefits management majors with a concentration in entrepreneurship, while the Frances and Patrick Stolle Endowed Scholarship in Athletics supports student-athletes majoring in business.

“I love the idea of helping others who have that entrepreneurial fire burning,” says Stolle, a member of the McCoy College Advisory Board who has also visited McCoy Entrepreneurial Studies classes as a guest speaker. “Texas State has given me a lot and I feel I owe something in return to the University, so that’s what I try and do.

"As a management major at Texas State, Stolle reveled in business classes that gave direction to his entrepreneurial energy and basked in a university climate that recognized hard work and drive."

He served in student government, was active in the Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity, and helped bring Sigma Chi, one of the nation’s oldest social fraternities, to campus.

“My daily schedule was packed, but that’s what I wanted and why I thrived at Texas State,” says Stolle, a Houston area native who bucked the Longhorn family tradition established by four older siblings – a move his younger brother, Manolo (B.B.A. ’90), would also replicate.

When Stolle graduated, he landed a job at Xerox, beating out some 500 candidates for one of the enterprise’s few new-hire slots. “Xerox and IBM were the two behemoths everyone wanted to work for,” Stolle says.

After three years at Xerox followed by two more as a gas trader at Ferrell Petroleum, Stolle decided to fully activate the entrepreneurial energy stirring inside him. He left his corporate job, returned to his parents’ home, and launched Exsyst Inc., a petrochemical product exporter. “It was frightening,” he says of the entrepreneurial leap, “but it’s what I knew I always wanted to do.”

Exsyst’s success empowered Stolle to pursue other business opportunities. He flipped houses, invested in restaurants and electric vehicles, and established Camcon LLC, a commercial real estate operation. Most recently, Stolle has been devoting much of his time to Simpello, a patented, proximity-based technology that facilitates secure interactions between a customer and a service provider. Without individuals ever having to remove a smartphone from their pocket to access an app or QR code, Simpello’s technology enables a consumer to seamlessly board a flight, enter a members-only fitness studio, or pass through stadium turnstiles.

Though Stolle says his days as a serial entrepreneur can be long and stressful, overstuffed with meetings and phone calls and requiring him to switch industries on a moment’s notice, it is nevertheless an energizing existence.

“It’s a weird dynamic sometimes, but when all’s said and done, I wouldn’t want it any other way,” he says. “I feel it’s so important to find a passion in life and get after it.” ✪

By Daniel P. Smith

Hillviews, Summer 2021